The title of our talk is How Martha Escaped Mudland and Got to Live by Golden Lake.
Sounds like a children's story doesn't it?
In one respect it is How Martha Escaped Mudland and Got to Live by Golden Lake.
So let's have the key lesson because it sets the stage for everything we're going to look at together.
Read along with me if you will please.
Making sure that it's up there.
I don't see it yet but here's the key lesson.
I'm sure Kate will post it even if it's there and I just don't see it.
Key lesson goes as follows.
We know but don't understand.
We will but yet we can't.
We try but miss the mark.
How do we know these things are true?
The evidence is right there before our eyes yet still we don't see.
We know but don't understand.
Isn't that true?
How much we believe we know and yet when the moment comes we find out over and over again lo and behold we don't understand.
Something is missing from our understanding.
We will but yet we can't.
That's what Paul,
St.
Paul,
I don't do the good.
I want to do the evil I wouldn't.
My will is to do what's right and true and yet I always miss what?
The mark.
And how do we know that these things are true?
Because our life is the evidence of them and in spite of the evidence all of it we don't see.
Why?
That's what I want to look at with you.
What is it that is missing from our life and it can be said in a number of different ways but perhaps the simplest of them is that we need new eyes and by new eyes don't go into imagination some new eye.
Eyes that can see with a certain clarity that all along they believe they understand,
They believe that they can do,
They believe that they know what the point of life is because they see it in front of them like some oasis and yet we never arrive.
And that brings us to a great mystery and I hope that you will follow along with me.
I'll ask you when I need to know if you have tracked.
There is something very mysterious about being a human being.
I don't think any of us would argue with that but the real mystery that I want to look at with you is that somehow we we do know something that we don't understand.
We long all the time for something that even though we have answered that longing 10,
000 different ways we still can't explain why that longing remains in place.
And I think most of us at least joining me here sense that there is another order of life that's possible for us.
We know that's true somehow and yet we remain as we do bound to these very painful patterns that we can't see keep promising us relief but secretly perpetuate our suffering,
Secretly perpetuate the illusion that we know,
The illusion that we have will and all of the other things that mark our day where we find ourselves once again in some kind of state that we don't know how we got there.
And of all the states that are the most familiar to us and I would ask please if you can see this with me.
Of all of these states would you agree to some extent that somehow or other the proof if you want to use these words that there is indeed another possibility another order of life that we can sense dimly see through a glass darkly all that business the proof of that is that there is a kind of dissatisfaction that follows us wherever we go.
I mean except for the high points you know where you where your meal arrives at the table or you fish for a compliment and you get it.
The high points where you wake up having a good night's sleep and your hair is all in the right but whatever those high points but other than those there is a constant kind of dissatisfaction and unease in our lives.
Would you agree with me that regardless what it is that we think can complete us and often do achieve nevertheless that longing will momentarily abate but it returns and the next thing we know there we are again looking around and looking at people and places and things and plans and hoping that one of them is going to bring about this peace but that never really does so completely.
Everybody on the same page with me.
Tony are you on the same page with me Tony?
So this longing that we have is ancient.
It permeates every culture.
It sits at the heart of most true sacred teachings and this longing is behind quite literally the crafting of every myth that's come through time about the idea of this transformation we're supposed to go through because all of us feel this longing in one way or another and all of these stories and myths and parables these metaphors the analogies they're all intended to help us as they are given to us by perhaps someone who's seen something more deeply than we have.
Supposed to give us a kind of a hint a little leverage a way in which we can learn something about why it is that through all of these ages humanity has preserved these stories and we can feel them when we hear them because as we hear them or read them they cause this invisible need within us to be stirred again and not just stirred within but usually these stories have some come to an a conclusion of some kind that has a happy ending that seems to resolve what had been irreconcilable until that point in time.
Everybody tracking?
So what would one of those stories be and to stay with me I've got several stories to go through with you but most of us and if you don't I will illuminate it most of us know the story of the ugly duckling.
Now ever so briefly the ugly duckling was a small creature somehow separated an egg rolled wherever it was and it became adopted by ducks and the barnyard animals that were all part of that family of creatures that helped raise this lost creature but this little lost creature could not no matter what it did escape the feeling that somehow or other it didn't belong where it was with whom it was spending its time.
This may not have happened to you but I remember it I always when I was a boy I kept thinking to myself surely I had to have been adopted because whoever these people are they can't be my family.
So anyway this poor creature suffers and it doesn't understand it's suffering or why it is drawn every day I'm enlarging the story a little bit why it's drawn down to the lake and then one day as the seasons roll here come these beautiful swans migrating through and they land on the lake and all of a sudden the little duckling the ugly duckling recognizes it was never a duckling it was never one of these barnyard creatures.
It was and always had been a swan and it joined its family.
It regained its regal stature because it wasn't going quack quack quack.
So the longing of this little creature and it's suffering if you're following me was not for the difference between itself and how and where it was raised the longing was that it had mistaken itself all along for being something that it was not and that so much of the pain was connected with trying to make what it was not fit with that little creature thought it had to fit so that it could belong to something it was never intended to belong to to begin with.
Do you follow me everybody?
That's a little a shift in where we're going so that we can see it and when I say follow I don't mean just follow up here I mean is there a feeling that you can find inside of yourself that relates to this story how we're always trying to fit in and make something that ostensibly we don't even want to be a part of or in and yet we have no place else to go and no one else to be save for the surroundings that we have found ourselves surrounded by.
So this little story and all stories all myths of transformation always begin with a revelation like the ugly duckling had that in fact it wasn't what it had mistaken itself to be but that its mistake was trying to belong to and fit into a world that it was never intended to.
Now the trick here is that appealing as it sounds to us because most of us go yeah that's it I'm actually a swan you know by the way swans never think to themselves I'm a swan.
Eagles never think to themselves I'm majestic.
Lions never sit and go look at my strength.
What is real doesn't think about itself at all.
So if we understand that this transformation is connected to a transition and that the transition required is that something unimaginable has to come along and not only does it have to come along but when it comes along somehow or other we're going to have to pay for what has transpired because it's not in the story but I'll tell you another one shortly when that little ugly duckling began to recognize it was a it had a swan nature do you think for a minute it didn't go to it didn't think as of well but how to what if I'm not accepted what if that's not right what if these people what if everybody turns on me who will I be without all of the creatures that I was critiquing moments before.
So here's the main point as we get through the first transition.
We cannot enter a higher order of life while remaining unchanged by it.
We cannot enter into a higher order of life while remaining unchanged by it.
What does that mean?
Here's the ugly duckling.
How was it changed?
Was it actually changed or was an understanding it had about itself brought into a light by which it suddenly recognized by this light I realized my true nature and by this light I realized what my true nature was not all along and it explains the longing even as it answers it because by entering into a new relationship with the world around it it finds the world within it that it always belonged to.
I know that was a lot of words but did you follow me because I want to go on with this.
Now I bring you another one of these allegories one of these old spiritual stories.
It's out of the East.
It's actually long ago called The Story of the Salt Doll and the story goes a doll made entirely of salt wanders thousands of miles across dry lands because this little doll had heard rumors of a great ocean that had stirred inside of its little salt heart a longing to see this vast ocean and so after thousands of years wandering across deserts that it was mostly at home with being of salt it arrives at the shore of the ocean stands there and it goes hello who are you who are you why why am I why do I want to be hello and the ocean answers in waves says come in and see come in and see and it's always saying come in and see life whether we know it or not light is always saying to us come in and see don't wait come in and see but the doll hesitates as do we but finally it takes the first step forward and when it does OMG suddenly it's frightened and why is it frightened because every step that it takes into the water costs it a part of itself first it's little toes disappear and yet it's still drawn and it steps further in and then it's little feet and then it's legs and the story goes and I'm illustrating it finally a wave overtakes it completely and as the wave overtakes the salt doll completely and it enters into the waters the last thing the little doll is now I know what I am now I know what I am beautiful story because it illustrates our journey the journey of a of a certain kind of crystallization that has taken place in human humanity in our consciousness that can feel the captivity of its own conditioning that it perpetuates even as there is a pain in that perpetuation because it is drawn to a world where it is no longer constrained as we are by our own conditioning this story of the salt doll is one of the great secrets of spiritual life the self that longs for the sea cannot know it without surrendering the form it presently calls itself the self that longs for the sea cannot know it without surrendering the form the self it presently calls itself there was a beautiful master he wrote this song I am the bubble make me the sea wave on the sea dissolve in the sea all of that around this idea of a certain transformation that has to take place that we are drawn to and yet when the moment comes and things start to dissolve or disappear we go no no no all right next story this is the story of Martha in mud land and how she got to live by Golden Lake so once upon a time there was a person named Martha who was born and raised in mud land now mud land was a place where everyone in mud land was covered in layers and layers of mud that became increasingly hard with each additional coat children were swaddled in it their society was organized around it and and mud was passed from generation to generation you inherited the principal mud of your parents and the more mud you got the better you felt because everything about mud land and mud people lived for mud now as we know mud cakes and hardens over time and this is true for the mud people movement becomes increasingly difficult people can't turn quickly they can't bend let alone embrace others freely why can't they turn quickly or bend easily let alone embrace because the minute they do that something cracks and everybody knows all the mud people know everything needs to be this smooth veneer this perfectly muddy veneer and so as a result you can imagine in mud land even the thoughts and emotions of the mud people became muddled and as everyone is caked equally in mud if you can imagine this everyone in mud land believes that's exactly what it means to be a good human being a good mud person and after a millennia it goes so far that self-improvement is centered on becoming an expert in mud management because the better control you have over the cracks that appear in the mud the more successful you seem as a human being and then you can get more mud to coat yourself in so there's mud management and then there's the political systems designed to control the behavior so that people don't cause cracks in each other and make better mud and then even learn how to sell your mud to others which is what we do in most of our conversations everybody you're getting the the gist of this this is that okay now our heroine Martha is different because while she has most of the things that mud people pursue a good mud family mud friends lots of mud in the bank in the mud pick a nice mud home nevertheless inside of Martha there is a definitive dissatisfaction a kind of I don't know if you can relate to this a kind of a smoldering question I know for me I was seems I was born with this question maybe it takes a long time for some but the question the smoldering question Martha's living with is why in the name of God can't I just be happy like everybody else I look at those mud people sitting at that mud table buying expensive mud and toasting and coating themselves with it I watch TV and there's all these places where there's different kinds of mud that if I went to I could have a different mud life but I'm not happy and because she can't explain the dissatisfaction she does what she wanders now she doesn't wander because she knows what she's looking for this is important because at a certain point Martha begins to realize I don't actually know what I'm looking for because all I find one way or another is a little more mud so her wandering is based in this idea that she can no longer pretend that she knows how to find what she's looking for and yet she is still drawn like the salt doll like the ugly duckling to the edge of the lake so she wanders further and further away and that's terrifying in itself please understand I'm telling you something humorous but I can't tell you how strenuously you must recognize how terrified you are of wandering away from your mud life from the muddy thoughts from the mud parties from throwing mud humanity's favorite occupation so one day she wanders farther from home than usual frightened of course but as she's doing this she looks through the woods there and she sees something that she doesn't recognize at all because what she sees is impossible given her life given the world that she's been raised in and what does she see well it looks like a young girl running through the woods but not just running like Martha knows how to run which is but freely unrestricted fluid and Martha's stunned I mean how is that possible no one I know can move like that no one I know is capable of not responding by throwing mud by by picking up mud by going into muddy thoughts muddy emotions no one I know isn't covered by something that seems to be a protection but in but in fact and she begins to suspect what is this that this person is do who where how all these questions and so Martha follows her from a distance and why would Martha follow this person from a distance not just out of curiosity but when she saw this young this young person running the way she did she she felt an inexplicable longing so powerful that it hurt I don't know if you've ever had a feeling like that I could look back in my life numerous times where I saw someone where I saw something happen that I knew was not of this world I saw a behavior I heard an idea I'd read something and I call them seeds of fire and suddenly something was set upon stirred and the next thing you know that's all the mind is occupied with is where did that come from and how do I return there and that's what she's feeling she wants to know she's drawn to it she follows the stranger from the distance and at that distance she sees something even stranger because the young girl runs right up to a vast golden gate looks like wrought iron but gold spaced like about that far apart each bar and then on all sides a wall that goes completely vertical until it reaches the sky impossible to scale and as the young girl gets to the gate Martha's running she's gonna run wondering she's gonna run into it the gate opens by itself gate opens the girl runs through the gate closes and Martha's stunned more what is this and she follows a little bit closer and tries to get a look and when she looks through the bars of the gate what she sees at a great distance and remember that at a great distance she sees that young girl join a group of other men and women boys and girls and they're all hanging out around and diving into this golden lake and this immense golden lake is being fed by an immense waterfall huge waterfall crashing down into the waters roaring and the overspray from the waterfall is going everywhere it's even reaching the gate where Martha is standing but she doesn't understand what an overspray of water is she's never seen water all she knows is it's oh is the forum she knows which is mud so she's sitting there and she feels something that is is troubling and promising at the same time because what she feels is something in her heart maybe you've had that it's like I don't know how I can possibly feel like this is familiar and yet everything of me seems to remember it is and if it is how could I forgotten that there was a place like this and the more she realizes that there is a place like this that something in her has forgotten but that she knows the more drawn she is to enter into it but the gate is there and all she knows in some way without even putting it into words this is the way life is meant to be this is how I am meant to be unrestricted not fearful of what I'm going to say or who might misunderstand me not frightened because the world seems to be moving this way or suddenly joyous because something has given me a little more mud to coat myself in another plan another distraction so what happens is she decides I've got to get in there but when she approaches the gate she discovers something terrible and what does she discover that's terrible she can't pass through the bars it didn't open for her and the reason she can't pass through the bars is because her body is covered with all of this mud it's too thick so you can imagine kind of banging against the gate if you ever you ever bang against the gate sensing that there is a higher way for you to be but something seems to be blocking you something you have not asked for it comes up in your mind something speaks for you with words and tones that you know aren't the right words and tones and yet there it is that mud-caked mind spewing out the mud that it has collected over all these years and that it actually believes is valuable and valuable enough to protect it so what does she do she calls out she calls out to the people way away away down by the lake beyond the gate but there's no way that they can hear her her voice is swallowed up by the war the roar of the waterfall she doesn't know what to do she thinks to herself maybe if I wait here long enough someone will come and I can go in with them or at least I can ask a question she waits and she waits and as she's waiting she barely takes notice of the fact that the spray from the waterfall has been landing on her all along and more so she doesn't notice as she's waiting that she's becoming more enraged feeling something she's never felt quite that way until she screams at the top of her lungs to try to get their attention but seems like no one cares and she walks away thinking no one cares no one no there's no love here whatever this is love is back in mud land where people at least coat you with something to make you feel content when you're not but she goes back and she can't escape what she has seen time and time again it comes to her and time and time again she wanders away once more to find her way back to that gate barely noticing I might add that each time she returns to stand at the gate that water is doing a little more of its work loosening this mud and listen to this so that a few times she goes to move and she doesn't feel the usual constraint and it frightens her it frightens her that she can act or do or say things that before she couldn't because who is this that's acting and saying and doing this it's a real problem to her but not just a problem to her let me tell you I'll tell you who it's more of a problem to it starts to frighten her friends and family because now they started to ask her what's going on with you what's happened you something's changing and she doesn't know what to say about what's changing and she certainly can't tell her friends and family about the Golden Gate and the lake and someone who she saw running without any mud on them at all how can there be a world without mud how can there be a world without tormenting thoughts how can there be a world without thoughts that come to release you from tormenting thoughts that turn out to be the seed of the next torment if you're following this metaphor this analogy and so instead of things getting better for her which they actually are but she can't see it what once felt acceptable to her mud land mud people angry bitter frightened infected human beings not with spit not with physical diseases but infected with fear infected with greed selfishness all of the things that are intended to fall off of a human being as soon as they appear because that's what a human being is intended to do is to transcend consistently the things that this world and the people around it and these conditions perpetuate so it it begins to feel unbearable it she starts she think I was happier before I found this gate before the before I saw that so can you see the conflict the contrast on one hand I'm drawn to something but on the other hand what I'm drawn to is is making me see more dissatisfied not just with the world that I've been in but angry that I can't get into the world that's creating this in me are you following me everybody and the longer she stays in mud land the more she sees how everyone is coated with these with with changing the matter coated mechanical reactions endless resentments constant regrets repetitive fears that mud and the inability of people because of that coating that they coat themselves with and coat themselves with as did their family and friends and generations before make it impossible for them to respond in a fresh way to life there is no fresh response to life when you're caked in conditioned thoughts and feelings so she sees all of that and as she does she becomes more aware of her own and the more aware she becomes of her own mud life the more painful it is to her because she's not here and she's not there and this is one of the great paradoxes of spiritual awakening where the freer we become the more painfully we begin to feel the prison that we once called normal and that's part of the pain what am I going to do where am I going to go how am I going to take care of myself everything I know is in mud land but she God willing you all of us she asks herself a question and it grows in her with each return to the gate and each bit of loosening softening of that mud as little parts fall off she asks again and again the question that real aspirants have to ask themselves if they've ever stood at that gate if they've ever seen through a glass darkly what only the interior light can allow them to recognize as true about their character and she asks as we must do I do I go back meaning to do I enter the next moment of my life understanding that if I'm standing in the right place I will receive something that can only be received there that as I receive it seems to release me from one world but terrifies me in the idea that what will happen if I'm not if I don't remain where and what I've been do I allow the spray from the waterfall to reveal what I didn't even suspect was a limitation let alone why I should agree to return and return and keep going through what I don't understand and what honestly I don't want to go through I don't want to see the truth of myself because I have to have some explanation and that's the next coat of mud isn't it explanations justifications excuses all of them perfect little you buy little jars it's called facial renewal I don't know and you put it on so now we make a big transition if you're following me and this is a big transition we're shifting gears to understand what we've looked at in terms of these myths and legends these teaching stories these analogies and how we can if we're fortunate at all we can see somehow by the light of understanding ourselves in these stories because they are in fact as all stories are a way of higher life representing to a lower consciousness that which it doesn't see about itself so it can remember what it has forgotten about itself the work we do to realize the truth of ourselves must be done within ourselves the work we do to realize the truth of ourselves must be done within ourselves and if that's true which it is that means there is no path to the peace that we seek if the kingdom of heaven is within where's the distance and if there's no distance what time does it take and if there's no time there's no trail that one must tread and more if we undertake any part of this journey of discovery at all we start to recognize and I know some of you have been listening to the student talks it's crazy I think I get it I think I understand but the part of me that thought it understood couldn't quite see that the rest of me didn't so I was identified with understanding and it made me feel like I'd made some kind of transition when suddenly I realized I haven't transitioned at all I'm still the same person because one part of me does not change the whole of me the whole of me must be changed if all parts are to be transcended so what must be done must be done to the whole of us it must act on all of our parts at the same time not me acting on a part of myself in retrospect because I realized I was wrong somehow there must be something that acts on the whole of us if something is acting on a part and the part recognizes itself as that which is acting which is good or that which is acted on because it's bad we've missed the mark entirely so if in fact we are to be liberated from this mud life this mud mind this mud heart then it should be evident and if it's not I'm going to spell it out if if we are to be liberated then we must be acted on by something that we of selves cannot create something that has no mud in it at all because it doesn't belong to that world that doesn't belong to time therefore it it's recognized for what it is and that if in fact there is something that can act that way it must be present at all times and we must be present to it and this is why the work of awakening must involve agreeing to stand in the light that reveals not just our thoughts our emotions are our hardened reactions and the relationships that they give rise to but like the salt doll we have to enter into something that we are already a part of in order to realize who we are and always have been in another order of being the salt doll when it dissolved simply lost the fear the illusion and I would add the longing of belonging to something that it was at birth but that it had forgotten because it had been separated and dried out like the mud that we are coated with that the more constrictive the mud the more definitive the feeling of what we must do somehow or other to live with mud we're not meant to live with muddled thoughts muddled feelings muddled fears but rather like Martha in our story to realize by the grace of God and it is by the grace of God suddenly you see something you hear something I can think of very distinct moments in my path all the way from six to a few major ones along the way where it was so evident ah here is what I'm looking for and the and the difficulty is that in the recognition of here's what I'm looking for is the pain of knowing that I'm not there I'm not that and now comes this idea that I'm gonna have to go through some long spiel to recognize what it is that in that mind will make it special again and all that's the work goes the that's mud works so we have to enter into something that's we are already a part of and what is that I got to get to the end of this talk a living light a living light that doesn't just make evident all of the characters and qualities of the moment we are in but that reveals them even as it acts on illuminates a nature we didn't even know was present and mud-caked within us try to see it sometimes I know you've seen moments where suddenly you get a little glimpse a little bit of light and for a split second you see something you go oh God and then and then comes to us just like that the mud hide it cover it up act like that's not you do anything other than let the let the mud fall so that people can see the mud underneath it so something exists which it already does to illuminate our identification with this unconscious nature but when the illumination of this unconscious nature comes we mustn't grab mud and coat ourselves again we must stand as did Martha at the gate where the spray from the water of the Golden Lake is doing what must happen to the whole of her not two parts of her what a terrible punishment it is to believe that there is a part of you that's going to save you when what you need to be saved from is the mud-caked illusion that somehow or other you are one part and that's another or that you're apart from this man and that situation we've mistaken a family of thoughts and feelings of reactions to be our own just like the ugly duckling took the barnyard animals to be its family and only by the grace of that light that reveals alone what it can that that family of thoughts and feelings that mud-caked environment everything that we spend our time trying to ensure it remains in place with no cracks only as that takes place do we we start to feel what it is that we were drawn to recognize which is there is a freedom I don't have to be liked by you I don't need the authority to make decisions that I'm afraid of I can do him on my all of these things gradually dawn on us and they dawn on us because we start to see what we could not see before let me bring up the second key lesson and we'll close this talk healing life lessons aren't just revealed by the light the light of revelation is real life and that's the lesson healing life lessons aren't just revealed by the light the light of revelation is real life and that's the lesson because every time we stand without flinching without turning away without lying to ourselves or picking up some more mud to make the pain of that revelation palatable every time we do that something falls off as it's meant to fall off as it's meant to fall away and when it falls away we mustn't go scrambling looking for a way to put it back together again Humpty Dumpty was made of mud so now we get back to Martha so Martha going through everything I've just described returns and returns with greater frequency meaning she spends more time present to everything that is being revealed to her about herself as represented by the golden gate and the over spray and one day Martha is standing there and as she's standing there she's starting to realize you know what I think I can slip through these bars and sure enough as she approaches the bars because she can get through now enough has fallen away as she approaches the gate what do you think happens gate opens by itself and that's how Martha left mud land and got to live by the lake the Golden Lake I gotta stop I hope I hope this fell in the right place on you don't be afraid don't cultivate friends because they console you don't don't console yourself with thoughts it's mud bear what happens when you stand in the light of revelation and every moment of life is revelation
